"PvP means squat" ... Sure I must have been playing squat then along with millions of others during all these years

Sorry but LOTRO, RIFT and around 2 billion others have ZERO official subscribers. They are integrated into their number of free to play mechanics, camouflaging things all over the place.

The fact of the matter is that these sub based launched things transformed to free to play without ANY official subscriptions at all. Sure you can take some premium options, but these things are quite hidden for the public to be known under an avalanche of FREE TO PLAY mechanics.

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They are free to play things, just like Farmville 2 or Hearthstone. But they LACK any decent multi million players like these 2 examples and they come FAR behind in active player numbers WHILE being FREE...

Go figure how much they stink.

The avatar movement in LOTRO always was a laugh and always will be. Rift was a bleak mini copycat of WoW the day it launched with appaling game play and an incredible absent Lore.

Rift had 99 full servers at launch as a subscription based game, now as FREE to play it crumbled to ... 15 half filled servers world wide in less than 2.5 years.

-----> Comparing free to play with official only subscription based games is like talking BS all over the place btw.

It's fine if you enjoy it, but that hasn't been, nor will never be the main focus of the game so it's irrelevant. As for the subscription argument, I'm not going to go there with you. Just because somebody doesn't pay for something doesn't mean they're not subscribed - if that's the case, I guess all the email subscriptions I have are imaginary or I'm paying for them in some way. What about FF Online, Wildstar, or ES Online? They have subscriptions. Hmm.
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Again, please don't talk about things you don't understand. Rift has an expansive lore, brilliant customization, and a way better talent system. They reduced the servers because they weren't suffering from Pride like the WoW devs and openly admitted they wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to play with somebody, so they reduced the servers so that the remaining ones were heavily populated.

Again, please don't talk about things you don't understand. Rift has an expansive lore, brilliant customization, and a way better talent system. They reduced the servers because they weren't suffering from Pride like the WoW devs and openly admitted they wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to play with somebody, so they reduced the servers so that the remaining ones were heavily populated.

Not everyone wants to play at heavily populated realms. I willingly moved from high-pop to low-pop just because I don't like when my realm is too crowded. I used to play on a medium-pop realms in vanilla/tbc times and that was fitting me just fine.
So I'm actually happy that Blizzard doesn't merge realms to the point when they become full. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who share the same view.

Not everyone wants to play at heavily populated realms. I willingly moved from high-pop to low-pop just because I don't like when my realm is too crowded. I used to play on a medium-pop realms in vanilla/tbc times and that was fitting me just fine.
So I'm actually happy that Blizzard doesn't merge realms to the point when they become full. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who share the same view.

But Blizzard still forces that on you. They may not have "merged" realms, but connected realms achieved the same result, essentially. Except it was a fancy way for them to avoid saying "we need to merge realms because our population is declining."

But Blizzard still forces that on you. They may not have "merged" realms, but connected realms achieved the same result, essentially. Except it was a fancy way for them to avoid saying "we need to merge realms because our population is declining."

Oh no they didn't. My realm got merged, but it's still far from crowded. Their goal was to bring near-empty/low-pop realms to medium level.

As to the first part of your OP; players are actually coming back now; preparing for the next expansion. Many people are scrambling to get their battle pets to 25 and gathering skills to 600 so when WoD happens, they can hopefully try to work their way out of poverty by making off with huge profits selling the new pets and minerals before the markets stabilizes. Also so that they can start raiding and pvping with their favorite friends almost immediately. Or to get their legendary now before the buffs stop rotating when WoD launches.

As to the second; personally, I've always stayed, because of the ultra high quality RP events on Moon Guard and because PvP never gets old.

"This is no swaggering askari, no Idi Amin Dada, heavyweight boxing champion of the King's African Rifles, nor some wide shouldered, medal-strewn Nigerian general. This is an altogether more dangerous dictator - an intellectual, a spitefull African Robespierre who has outlasted them all." - The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the martyrdom of Zimbabwe, Peter Godwin.